The results of a study by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) have shown that the data of the average European user is shared 376 times a day. U.S.-based users’ data were shared 747 times daily.
Other important findings of the report are the fact that data about U.S. web users’ habits are shared in advert sales processes 107 trillion times a year. European users’ data is shared 71 billion times.
In addition, Germany’s individual internet users’ data is shared once per minute that they are online using a calculation based on average values.
The data is shared between brokers who want to place ads on behalf of this company in real-time while the website is being loaded in front of the reader.
The information collected includes information about the device on which the page is loaded, some details about where the device is located, and other information such as web pages visited and their content.
The report explained that the brands in the ads themselves were not involved. The data was used to secure the most relevant bidder for the ad space on the site, the report said.
Although the stolen data does not contain any personal information, campaigners argue that the data still constitutes an invasion of users’ privacy.
The sources for this piece include an article in BBC.